A Misty Wedding in the Capital

[Ambitious heroine + powerful hero + healing + devoted to each other + groveling after losing her] In the summer she turned nineteen, Qiao Li failed for the ninety-ninth time to escape an arranged marriage. On the eve of being forced to marry an old man, she climbed into the bed of Jin Mingji, a fallen young heir who had exiled himself from the capital to a border city. Qiao Li knew he had once loved someone else, but she didn’t care. She only wanted to attach herself to him and use his power to escape the abyss.

Their relationship began with raw desire. After months of entanglement, he took her back to the capital, that glittering world of excess. No one knew that Jin Mingji, heir to a family raised in wealth and privilege, had spent month after month with her in a rented apartment in the border city.

She sat her exams again, reclaimed her title as top scholar, and stepped toward the life she had once envisioned. But on the eve of Jin Mingji’s engagement to his first love, she was forced to leave the capital and lost everything she had gained.

Years later, they met again in Hong Kong. She walked past him with her arm linked through another man’s. That night, a Maybach sat outside her apartment building until morning as the man sent her message after message.

He said, “Xiao Li, it’s only ever been you.”

Born into poverty, Qiao Li never believed in fate. On her way to becoming someone new, she seized every chance to change her life. From the moment they met, Jin Mingji was drawn to her relentless vitality. Their relationship was a sticky, irresistible tug-of-war, a clear-eyed surrender. She was a cactus reaching ever higher in the desert, a wild rose he had cultivated with his own hands, and the love of his life.